Super-Size Dock Icon Magnification in Mac OS X

For those using larger displays you may wish the OS X Dock icon magnification was greater on the Mac, but it turns out this can be achieved easily with a defaults write command.

You’ll need to turn to the terminal to use this trick. The number at the end of the syntax represents the pixel dimensions of the icon magnification, so 200 equates to 200×200 (for reference, 128 is the default):

defaults write com.apple.dock largesize -float 200

200×200 makes the icons quite a bit larger, but you’ll start noticing pixelation on non-retina displays because not all Macs support resolution independence with OS X and their screen PPI.

For you to see the changes, you’ll need to have Magnification enabled through System Preferences > Dock > Magnification, and then you’ll have to kill the Dock:

Other than aesthetic reasons, larger magnification can be useful when setting up user accounts for novices, the visually impaired, or kids. If this is your objective, you might want to go a step further and create an iOS style desktop for the Mac.

Beyond a point this really isn’t that useful and it can turn just downright useless and even ugly as icons get pixelated, case in point: